Mitsubishi Motors said it cheated fuel efficiency tests, overstating fuel efficiency by 5 percent to 10 percent for a car produced in Japan.
Company president Tetsuro Aikawa yesterday said the cheating affected 620,000 cars sold from 2013 through the present, adding that the mishandling of the test data was “intentional.”
In a statement, the automaker said it will investigate whether the cheating affected vehicles sold overseas.
The affected cars — four mini-car models — were sold to Nissan and are sold under the names eK Wagon, eK Space, Dayz and Dayz Roox. Mitsubishi and Nissan will stop the production and sale of the four cars.
“We express deep apologies to all of our customers and stakeholders for this issue,” Mitsubishi said in a statement.
Mitsubishi’s announcement comes as Volkswagen has reportedly reached a deal with US authorities to settle its emissions cheating case. Germany’s Die Welt newspaper reports that VW will pay each affected customer $5,000 and that the automaker will avoid a trial.
Last month, a federal judge gave VW until April 21 to come up with a fix for the nearly 600,000 diesel-engine cars in the US equipped with illegal “defeat devices” that allowed them to beat emissions standards.
While VW and Mitsubishi are two of the most recent automakers to admit to cheating emissions and fuel efficiency laws, they’re not the first.
In 2015, Hyundai-Kia agreed to pay a record $100 million penalty and for selling close to 1.2 million vehicles that emitted about 4.75 million metric tons of greenhouse gases in excess of what the automaker certified to the EPA.
According to a report from CDP published last month, the sector could face up to $4.8 billion in emissions penalties.
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